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Completely Rework Changelings


themaskedman2

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Preface:

Well this has been a long time coming. It is my personal opinion, that a good chunk of Antagonists as a whole, are really due for some reworks, while functional, they have barely been changed besides minor balance adjustments since their initial conception years and years ago, and with the growing heavy roleplay environment of this server, and how everything has changed over time, they simply don't match and blend well. The most urgent among these, in my opinion, is Changeling. What I am going to be proposing here, is my personal ideas and thoughts for a potential rework of Changelings, and what I hope to gain, is further discussion from others, improvements, and further ideas on how we can improve this game-mode. I am aware this is not an easy task, and is a lot of work, but I believe at least starting on this, over time will create a better experience overall. Without further delay, let's begin.


Redesign Changelings to be more like "The Thing"


If you haven't seen "The Thing", honestly do yourself a favor and go watch it, it is my favorite horror movie of all time and for good reason as well. Anyways, with this, I have a few ideas and thoughts on how to re-imagine Changeling to be less of a meme-sting human that perma-kills everyone, and more of an interesting Antagonist that properly gives a feeling of anxiety, paranoia, and "Anyone" could be another "Thing". My formatting skills are not the greatest, so I will list this by section as potential mechanical changes that I would like to see done to Changelings. Once again, this post is less about "please specifically implement my ideas for Changeling!", and more just to get some ideas out on the fact that Changeling needs some changes. Prepare for a ramble of some of my ideas, that I am hoping for some feedback on.


#1, Create a bigger focus on Horror Form, and body horror in general.

By saying this, I mean a few things. Currently as it is, Horror Form is an extremely rare end-game OP ability to essentially go on a murder rampage. I believe Horror Form should be redesigned, now hear me out. First of all, Horror Form should be more common, but less robust. Let's give an example, taking from the movie, "The Thing." The creature would only enter one of it's various "horror forms" when it was essentially discovered, or seeking to attack someone and assimilate them. How I would hope to see this happen in game, would be lings would essentially have a few RNG horror forms, with maybe some varying abilities, but much less robust, yet still a threat and able to take on 1-2 people. These transformations are very obvious, loud shrieking, spooky noises, blood everywhere, it's not something you turn into in order to silently robust someone, because it will likely alert the entire department around you.


A ling transforming in my mind would ideally go like this: The Changeling decides to transform, people freak out, and it starts to go on a bit of a rampage, going around, slashing people, acid, whatever abilities it may have potentially been given. Before long, it is likely put down by fire, sheer gunfire, mounting damage, or something else, and killed. Now HERE is where I seek to differentiate, during this, the Changeling is essentially dead, or soon to be, because we can reasonably assume the crew are going to butcher that monstrous corpse, burn it, or many other things. Though what I hope, would be that people attacked or slashed by the Horror Form, are potentially infected. (Perhaps a few stealth-form abilities can infect others as well?) You see, in "The Thing." Cells will rapidly and stealthily take over infected people, and before even they know it, they are no longer themselves, and are a new "Thing." This idea, would allow the "dead" Ling player, to "resurface" within one of it's infected people, taking over their body and essentially becoming them. Now how I hope this will work out roleplay wise, is that it will "appear" that the person was a Changeling "all along!" and cause people to panic and become paranoid. Of course, this "conversion" is not instant, and I believe that it should cause the converting player to spasm, twitch, vomit blood, and some other things before the Ling has fully taken control.


Now slight problem with this. "Oh so Lings have infinite lives and can never be really killed? Lame." I propose we just limit the amount of times a Changeling can do this, perhaps only once, perhaps twice? Or perhaps give it a massive cool-down, or perhaps they only gain another chance at this when they have assimilated another player. (More on that later.) I'm sure we can come up with ideas to balance this later. The idea here is to have horror form be something that appears throughout the round a few times, without being OP, and also not permanently taking the Ling out of the round because chances are it's discovered and hunted down. Perhaps when defeated it can gib into a bunch of limbs that can easily attempt to escape instead? Perhaps it turns into a "baby-ling" (Also more on that later.)


The idea behind infection is it is essentially a nasty disease with slowly worsening side effects as the ling cells start to convert and assimilate the host. I am not sure the mechanics behind this if the Ling doesn't decide to revive in your body, do you become a Ling? Might be a bit OP then, it needs more thought.


#2, Rework Changeling Succ'ing, Progression and it's Objectives

Currently, Changelings murder too much for a heavy roleplay server, they are extremely, way too reliant on the aspect of murdering, and permanently taking other players out of the round, for what our server is based on. This also isn't up to the player either, if you try to play a 'Ling that roleplays more than succ'ing you might as well be a normal human. I have a few various ideas for this, Let's instead rework "succ'ing" to assimilation, and to change the Changelings goals from "succ and murder as many people as possible." to "assimilate and spread your kind.".


How this would work is in a similar manner as before, and perhaps they would have some more abilities to better use it as a horror form as well, though for now the idea is that when the Changeling neck grabs someone, goes through the assimilation process, instead of killing the other player permanently, the "Husk", will eventually melt into a sorta small blob "Ling." Let's call it a baby-ling for now. This creature can vent crawl, is relatively weak, and it's objective is to hopefully find a lone player, and take them over, perhaps by a slightly long and gruesome process, after which the end, it will take that player over, and become a new "Adult Changeling." I propose that it simply has a pounce ability or a way to slow people so it's specialized in taking on people alone, but if it attacks a group it's likely screwed. Unfortunately this idea still results in some deaths for players, but it does drastically lower the quantity, and amount, and to be honest, a bit of death is needed if you ask me. Gives you something to fear.


Furthermore, I believe that the abilities available to changelings, should increase not with it's "Kill Counter", and instead with "How many Lings are active", this encourages the player to bring others into the fold of the round instead of taking people out.


#3, Remove Stings, and make Changelings more Robust/Harder to kill.

Stings aren't fun, maybe a few of them are neat, but all stings scream to me is not "Terrifying Monster" but instead "Dude with invisible murder buttons.". I'm going to be frankly honest, I do not have a particularly great idea of what abilities I would replace stings with, arm blade, perhaps shooting bone shards, tentacle arm, some other things that would increase it's stealth? Though I DO have ideas on how to make Changelings harder to kill. First of all, stop decapitations from killing Lings, I feel that much like "The Thing." every single cell of the Lings body should be a weapon, and alive, making good old fire the best way to kill them, a decapitation should not make it so this monstrosity is unable to revive, if anything, the head should grow spider legs and run off while the body spasms and beings to grow again. I do not believe anything but fire or gibbing should permanently kill a ling, and even then I believe it should be able to "Re-surface" through one of the people it has infected.


Another idea, if a Changeling is killed while in it's disguised, relatively weak human form, give the player the usual option of continuing to play dead until able to revive normally, or the always available option of immediatly transforming into a horror form entity. There is no reason that this in-human monster, while "Seemingly" dead, should actually be doing anything more than playing dead, and if it is threatened, it should reasonable transform to defend itself. After all, it's simply playing dead. This to me would overall result in Changelings feeling much more like a persistent threat spreading among the crew, less like a normal human you can track, and more like a horrifying monster that anybody could potentially be. These things should be hard as fuck to kill.


Potential Abilities! (Really need some ideas, ideally changelings would only start with a fraction of these.)

Horror Form - Transform into a monstrosity in an attempt to assimilate those around you, very obvious.

Arm Blade - Transform one of your limbs into a deadly blade.

Transform - Transform your appearance into one of the many souls that have been assimilated by your kind.

Assimilate - Assimilate someone that has been neck grabbed, this will husk them, and over time transform the body into a Proto-Ling (baby-ling)

Bone Shard - A ranged sharpened bone protrudes from your skin at an unfortunate target. (Considerably less powerful than horror version.)

Tendril - Sprout a fleshy tentacle from your body that can be used to impale, or grab someone.

Lesser Form - Transform into an assimilated animal. (Idea being you can essentially absorb things like mice, monkeys, etc, in order to become them.)

Electro-Camoflauge - I forgot the original name but the thing that stops the AI from seeing you.

Regenerate - Play dead and slowly regenerate your stealth form.

Degenerate - Disassemble your body into a mess of limbs and a proto-ling as an escape mechanism. (Ideally the limbs would be simple mobs that attack people while you escape in the chaos.)

Blood Vomit - Vomit and emit a grotesque display of blood around you, potentially infecting those around you and blinding them.

Screech - Emit a terrifying screech, stopping those around you in their tracks and causing lights to flicker. (Use this sound clip god please.

)

Unnatural Strength - Forego the limitations of your fake disguise, in order to sustain more punishment. (Essentially give the ling some damage resistance all around, and let them not feel pain, probably with a big flavor text warning of "X's body contorts into a mockery of human capabilities!" Essentially up the robustness of your friendly neighborhood monster without committing to horror form.)


Now let's talk about balance.

Honestly, while thinking of these many ideas, they are not set in stone, and the balance of them compared to the current changeling is absolutely thrown out the window, this to me comes across as nothing but a major buff, and brings the manner in which they affect the round up to around Malf or Cult levels really. Though what I do believe, is that this would make Changelings much, much, much more fun to deal with, instead of the silent thing that instantly perma-murders you in the tunnels, or death/para-stings you with little roleplay. Of course, everything I said is just rambling Ideas that I sincerely welcome adjustments and critique on. I am not the best at describing my thoughts, and honestly I will probably think of more I accidentally left out and seek to add them to this post later.


The idea of this is to shoot out ideas, extremely rough ideas, and the kinks and balance can be worked out at a later time during actual development.


Conclusion

In conclusion, these are my ideas, rambles, and other nonsense that I personally believe would make Changeling a better gamemode. If this suggestion is accepted, I am not particularly hoping that specifically my ideas as written are implemented, because I am sure there are a LOT of problems with them. If this is accepted, I just want people to agree that Changeling needs a lot of work, and needs to be changed, one way or another. Now, I sincerely welcome, anyone else to please give me feedback on my ideas, add ideas of your own, how do you think Changeling could be improved? Is X idea dumb because of Y? Etc. I hope to start a discussion on this antagonist and how it can be updated to better reflect and encourage roleplay, thank you for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts.

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Oh boy. Another changeling rework thread. This must be #10 this year.


Not that I think you're wrong, and some of these ideas are interesting. And it's true, changeling is probably one of the worst/most tepid antags. Almost no one actually enjoys playing them, and those that do still probably prefer playing other antagonists.


But let's be real. The likelihood of changeling being significantly reworked at some point in the near future is incredibly low. The coders are all busy with newmap still, and I have not detected a large amount of general disinterest in doing more than occasionally poking at their balance. A full redesign does not seem in the cards at this time.


I mean, feel free to discuss and bounce ideas around. Suggestion threads aren't only allowed if something is viable.


But don't be surprised when this thread sinks down into the murky obscurity of the deadthread pile just like every other changeling rework thread has done since I started visiting this server.

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I really, really enjoy the idea of having the Changeling to become a bit more like it's source of inspiration. True paranoia and the fear of not being able to trust anyone.


The biggest concern I have about this is code-wise. While I have no idea how much work would these changes need, it does sound like backbreaking work.

My other concern would be how the balancing would go. The crew in the original movie only had fire to protect themselves with, but what about a prestigious Phoron Research Facility? Wouldn't acid technically work as well since it'd be able to eat through the biomass? Would Phoron even be toxic to it?


Overall, I really think it could be interesting to see a more The Thing-oriented changeling. Plus, what if they'd be able to spread faster if they have living bodies instead of simply waiting for carcasses? It might also help motivating into not killing their victims as much. (I mean, it'd be sort of hard to overtake a cell that isn't alive)

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Didn't read all of this because tbh I'm lazy but what I read was very enticing. I like good old body horror and atmosphere a lot more than "murder spree lol" and when I ling I try to carry my stance through to the end. I rarely get horror form or even absorb many people but usualy spend the first points I am given and make an idea that I think is fun for myself and ithers involved (which I try to make be all the crew at once). Overall I'd be down with this. I can't actually help add to it or code it or anything but y'know. I'd support it.

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This is...a very, very solid suggestion. I've played a fair bit of antag in my time, across a few servers, and not one has there been a Ling that felt satisfying or "spooky". As a Security main, I love being spooked, I love the horror of creeping around Maint looking for lings or vamps. But at the moment, Lings don't have the proper atmosphere. Lings should be known as horrifying, grotesque creatures that no one can feel safe from, not an annoying pest that spams stings at anyone who gets near them.


+1, all my +1's for these ideas.

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I would love to see this, and maybe allow virology to cure infected.

 

Thanks, ive thought further about the Changeling virus as well, and I would prefer if virology could have a hand.


Assimilation Virus - A virus that stealthily replaces host cells with it’s own, until full assimilation into a horror.


Transmission - Most attacks from horror forms, certain changeling abilities, assimilation succ’ing if it didn’t finish. (aka stabbed proboscis in but didnt finish the succ)


Symptoms - None until final stages where brain conversion is imminent, spazms, twitching, vomiting, pain.


Detection - None, virus is indistinguishable from normal human DNA. There may be unknown ways to test it though.....


Cure - Purge by fire. (Or perhaps a living specimen may have new insights?)



Let me note that I believe this is different from full succ’age. Which is less of a virus and more of a full garuntee a proto-ling will emerge from the husked corpse.


Idea being here is while the virus is in it’s last stage, any ghosted/dead ling can resurface inside a final stage infected victim. Immediatly causing spazms and vomiting. (So hopefully they wait until they are alone.) If the stage finishes without a changeling mind taking it, the player themselves will just become the changeling.


Further this encourages changelings to adopt a few choices for a playstyle. Kill people and have dead cells repurposed to proto-ling that needs to grow? Or stealthily infect people with much greater risk of discovery but it will create adult changelings?


(The reason for allowing changelings this boot-leg respawn, of which the more I think about, they should only have one per round. is so they are encouraged to put on a bit of a show and be scary with horror form without complete fear of being beaten into the dust so soon. Ideally lings will get discovered, go horror, and die on a rampage instead of hiding in a corner.)


Ideally Viroloy will need a living changeling specimen to hope to develop a cure. Though the cure has side effects. Assume you cure someone with a mid-stage infection. What this will do is violently expel any ling cells. Which typically means your arm may fall off, or an organ, and that arm may be a primitive hostile, or maybe there was enough infected cells within you to expel a proto-ling.


Anyways, more rambling ideas, feedback and critique is appreciated. If even a fraction of this is implimented I will be quite satisfied.

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I do like some features of this but I do also disagree with some for example


Disagree:


Removing stings - This is something really helpful for the ling and honestly is just genuinely helpful

Making them have less lives - I think this just takes away from the spooky vibe of the changeling, making a monster kill able makes it seem weaker, and likely to be meta rushed. By that I mean, security won't care for there lives and the ling is likely to run away making them loose the big scary monster and loosing the strength you wish them to gain.. (i think lol)



'meh' : The infection, which is one of the main parts of this conversion ( well at least I think it is ) While I do think its quite a nice change to the changeling and allows new scenarios I feel like just 'slashing' someone is quite OP and should be replaced with an ability where the victim must be downed and stung or something along them lines.


Summery of infection:


+ Gets the entire crew evolved, no one is going to be left out if murderous monsters are on the station. Or if there life is threatened by a fucking disease

+ Could lead to interesting scenarios, quarantines, the sacrifice of masses. etc lol

- Slashing infects, I just feel that could get /very/ out of hand quickly and just a mess rather then RP.


Agree:


Some of the new abilities you have listed seem quite interesting and have some good depth to them.

The focus on the horror form seems pretty neat, making the changeling seem like a bigger threat and puts a better focus on the crew working together to take it down rather then sec memeing it with a harmbatton.



Suggestion:


For the love of god an ability to open a broken door with powers or something along them lines. no one likes being stuck in solitary. /NO ONE/ does.



OVERALL:

Some ideas in this are pretty neat and I do like the direction this suggestion is heading, obviously its not perfect, nothing is but its a start


Anyway +1 from me there just my thoughts

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I do like some features of this but I do also disagree with some for example


Disagree:


Removing stings - This is something really helpful for the ling and honestly is just genuinely helpful

Making them have less lives - I think this just takes away from the spooky vibe of the changeling, making a monster kill able makes it seem weaker, and likely to be meta rushed. By that I mean, security won't care for there lives and the ling is likely to run away making them loose the big scary monster and loosing the strength you wish them to gain.. (i think lol)



'meh' : The infection, which is one of the main parts of this conversion ( well at least I think it is ) While I do think its quite a nice change to the changeling and allows new scenarios I feel like just 'slashing' someone is quite OP and should be replaced with an ability where the victim must be downed and stung or something along them lines.


Summery of infection:


+ Gets the entire crew evolved, no one is going to be left out if murderous monsters are on the station. Or if there life is threatened by a fucking disease

+ Could lead to interesting scenarios, quarantines, the sacrifice of masses. etc lol

- Slashing infects, I just feel that could get /very/ out of hand quickly and just a mess rather then RP.


Agree:


Some of the new abilities you have listed seem quite interesting and have some good depth to them.

The focus on the horror form seems pretty neat, making the changeling seem like a bigger threat and puts a better focus on the crew working together to take it down rather then sec memeing it with a harmbatton.



Suggestion:


For the love of god an ability to open a broken door with powers or something along them lines. no one likes being stuck in solitary. /NO ONE/ does.



OVERALL:

Some ideas in this are pretty neat and I do like the direction this suggestion is heading, obviously its not perfect, nothing is but its a start


Anyway +1 from me there just my thoughts

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I do like some features of this but I do also disagree with some for example


Disagree:


Removing stings - This is something really helpful for the ling and honestly is just genuinely helpful

Making them have less lives - I think this just takes away from the spooky vibe of the changeling, making a monster kill able makes it seem weaker, and likely to be meta rushed. By that I mean, security won't care for there lives and the ling is likely to run away making them loose the big scary monster and loosing the strength you wish them to gain.. (i think lol)



'meh' : The infection, which is one of the main parts of this conversion ( well at least I think it is ) While I do think its quite a nice change to the changeling and allows new scenarios I feel like just 'slashing' someone is quite OP and should be replaced with an ability where the victim must be downed and stung or something along them lines.


Summery of infection:


+ Gets the entire crew evolved, no one is going to be left out if murderous monsters are on the station. Or if there life is threatened by a fucking disease

+ Could lead to interesting scenarios, quarantines, the sacrifice of masses. etc lol

- Slashing infects, I just feel that could get /very/ out of hand quickly and just a mess rather then RP.


Agree:


Some of the new abilities you have listed seem quite interesting and have some good depth to them.

The focus on the horror form seems pretty neat, making the changeling seem like a bigger threat and puts a better focus on the crew working together to take it down rather then sec memeing it with a harmbatton.



Suggestion:


For the love of god an ability to open a broken door with powers or something along them lines. no one likes being stuck in solitary. /NO ONE/ does.



OVERALL:

Some ideas in this are pretty neat and I do like the direction this suggestion is heading, obviously its not perfect, nothing is but its a start


Anyway +1 from me there just my thoughts

 

Okay thanks for the feedback, let me touch on all of your points quickly I suppose. Let me pre-face this with if this suggestion is accepted, i'm not really asking for every bit to be added exactly as I detailed, feel free to pick and choose, it's a spitball of various ideas I had that attempts to make Ling better, I doubt it's perfect.


Let's start with the infection. This has been a bit of a contending point for me, it may get slightly out of hand, I agree. Though it was part of my idea in order to give lings a chance at continuing to be a spooky menace throughout the round. That could be sacrificed in favor of say, when one of the horror forms die, it splits apart into a bunch of little bits, sprays blood in a sorta smoke bomb sorta manner, and gives it a chance to creep away. Then again, we can also severely limit how the infection works. We could have it so it doesn't convert people at all, but still lies dormant for dead ling players to resurface, within a certain period of time after being slashed.


Not that I think about it, that may work better, full conversion of another player may only work through the typical succ-in-maintenance idea. Horror-Form slashes are a weaker form of the infection, that mechanically is only a way for a ling to respawn for a certain period of time, in this manner it gets less out of hand, and even so, maybe have the infection only spread from a good succ'ing like ability. Perhaps horror forms can get a "Stab Bob in the arm with a proboscis!" or.. something. Anyways, rambling. As I said, it's a general idea. Devs can look it over more deeply.


Now my part on removing stings. Perhaps they can stay, but I really think they need to be less of a focus for the ling, and a few could use some changes, perhaps change it to certain stings requiring a passive grab to activate, or something.


Oh, and about your suggestion for opening locked doors, let arm blades act as a crowbar or a strong claw or whatever, eaaaaasy.


Anyways, thanks for the feedback.

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-1


Sounds like it wouldn't make a good antag as is, it wouldn't offer much RP and would really just get ganked in the first ten minutes, unless it ganked first.

 

Can you explain this to me a bit more? A major point of this suggestion is to prevent ganking by giving the ling more ways to revive, and to lower the amount of gankiness coming from lings by causing it's attacks to give the victims more things to do. Also do you not have any ideas yourselves on how to improve Changeling? I feel like people here aren't understanding i'm not looking for exactly all of my rambling suggestions to be added, and it's just some ideas for Changeling. If others have ideas or specific critiques they can try to suggest their own ideas as well.

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For those unaware, Polaris Ling is like ours with a few extra powers, I think the only powers of ours it doesn't have is Horror Form, but that's fixable.


The biggest change from our Ling to Polaris Ling is that Polaris Changelings start with 8 evolution points as opposed to our 5. They can only obtain evolution points from OTHER lings though. Absorbing a normal player merely gets you a respec, where you can refund your points and spend them again.


Some of the powers Polaris ling has that ours doesn't are

-Growing clothes out of your skin

-Turning one of your arms into a Flesh Shield

-Inflating your skin to act as a pressure suit

-Reinforcing your bones to be unbreakable, and have higher base hp

-Growing chitinous battlearmor from your skin

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It's always good to dream, but i agree with Bygone that it would be too complicated to build those new mechanisms.


A suggestion would be making the changeling something more like a parasite that can leave it's humanoid shell when it's in danger, sounds OP, but with the right amount of nerfs it would be perfect to give the crew a scare and still not make the ling some immortal being wandering around. PS: Not that it wouldn't be complicated to build this new feat also.

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For those unaware, Polaris Ling is like ours with a few extra powers, I think the only powers of ours it doesn't have is Horror Form, but that's fixable.


The biggest change from our Ling to Polaris Ling is that Polaris Changelings start with 8 evolution points as opposed to our 5. They can only obtain evolution points from OTHER lings though. Absorbing a normal player merely gets you a respec, where you can refund your points and spend them again.


Some of the powers Polaris ling has that ours doesn't are

-Growing clothes out of your skin

-Turning one of your arms into a Flesh Shield

-Inflating your skin to act as a pressure suit

-Reinforcing your bones to be unbreakable, and have higher base hp

-Growing chitinous battlearmor from your skin

 

Even these would be more acceptable to me, but I still think that holds onto the innate core of Changeling, which is what I believe is flawed. I would certainly prefer a complete rework to be honest as opposed to band-aids over the top, because currently, innately. It's not fun. Even to play it, it's not that fun. I would settle for this, it would make Lings better, but it doesn't solve my innate issues with the gamemode. A coder has said my suggestions did not seem that difficult, but I can't particularly say because i'm not a coder.


I just think Changeling needs something done, lest it remain as a shit-fest. Whether it is my ideas, others ideas, or something else entirely. Vampire has the stealth traitor theme. Changeling should shift to horrific monster theme.

 

It's always good to dream, but i agree with Bygone that it would be too complicated to build those new mechanisms.


A suggestion would be making the changeling something more like a parasite that can leave it's humanoid shell when it's in danger, sounds OP, but with the right amount of nerfs it would be perfect to give the crew a scare and still not make the ling some immortal being wandering around. PS: Not that it wouldn't be complicated to build this new feat also.

 

I will continue to dream until Changeling is perfect. I would not mind just something that gives them more room for error, even as they currently are, they can't even revive most of the time because chem points may not be at the top, and they certainly don't regen them when dead, and you know people will think up any tiny little flimsy excuse to decap you.


Changeling as it currently is, is just some dude with a fancy looking knife, and can regenerate when dead, but only sometimes, and only if nobody decaps them.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...

me revive this thread, because someone literally did a 'the thing' body horror rp gimmick recently as changeling and everyone loved it. now imagine if they had more mechanics to back it up, do this, please, im kind of an antag main and everything in this makes it easier to do what your job is to do as an antag. that being, MAKE THE ROUND FUN FOR OTHERS. if you have to worry about dying so easily, that is very hard

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